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Before getting into this week's farm update, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the weather and how wacky it has been this season. There is always unpredictability during a farm season, but historically weather has been fairly dependable depending on what growing zone you are located in. That has changed in recent years, especially when it comes to precipitation. Just looking at the numbers, annual rainfall has been consistent, but if you look closely, the time between rain events has been longer and the intensity of some of these storms is much greater. The storms in recent weeks have definitely wreaked havoc on growers here locally and throughout the Northeast. I'm afraid that this is going to be the "new normal" moving forward with agriculture. This is why diversification and sustainable farming methods are so important to build climate resilience. I can keep going and will probably revisit this again at some point, but let's get to a farm update.

Last week we had our first visitors of the summer to the farm. A group of students from Groton High School's Summer Bridge program came out for a brief visit. They have been on campus for a couple of weeks doing different programming and campus activities and I had the pleasure of hosting them for a discussion around local food systems, farm to table and the programs that the farm supports at the College. I'm not sure if it is a regional thing, but each year I am impressed more and more by how many young people are invested in/concerned about food systems. It was a great way to start the week! We were able to cultivate the basil, ginger and husk cherries, as well as finishing up support for the eggplant and peppers. Tomato work continues. Most of the greenhouse tomatoes can now be suckered and trellised standing. That makes a huge difference. It will change when we begin to harvest, but it's a nice break at the moment. I had mentioned a couple weeks ago about releasing beneficial insects in the greenhouse to control for aphids. Well, that has been working out very well at the moment. After we had been releasing lady beetles, we have released parasitic wasps for the last two weeks. I know that sounds a somewhat crazy when you read "parasitic" along with wasps that we normally think of. But these are tiny wasps that look like little gnats. They lay eggs in the aphids, killing them when they hatch. We have one more round to release and then we will begin to observe to see if there is a problem. We also began some bed preparation for planting that will hopefully get done by week's end. 

The CSA share this week is going to the very first cherry tomatoes of the season. It is a small amount this week, but the plants are loaded and ready to start ripening. The temps the rest of the week should really help in that department. There will also be rainbow chard, green tomatoes, garlic, basil (here's a recipe that I love), black currants, and a "veggie medley". There will also be potatoes this week. We had some "seed" potatoes (potatoes sorted and saved to replant) in our cooler that didn't get planted. I played around with them over the weekend, and they were great as home fries and potato salad.

Have a great week!

-Farmer Todd